


The Funny Tricks Of Time

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 07:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has one photograph of all her children together in which no one was crying and no one was playing a prank on someone else and no one looked bored and everyone was smiling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Funny Tricks Of Time

She has one photograph of all her children together in which no one was crying and no one was playing a prank on someone else and no one looked bored and everyone was smiling. It was taken for Aunt Muriel’s birthday but Molly treasures her copy far more than their aunt ever will. 

Bill is sixteen in the photograph, he and fifteen year old Charlie already showing such promise of the handsome men they would become. They’re sat on the sofa, with five year old Ginny on Charlie’s lap and a slightly older Ron sat on Bill; when they were very small, people often thought that her two youngest were twins as well, their smiles were so similar and Ron’s height not kicking in until he was almost in to double figures. 

The real twins, eight years old and their eyes brimming with an energy she had once wished to contain, were standing behind dressed in initialed jumpers so that Aunt Muriel could tell the difference. Percy stands between them and he is smiling too, really smiling, a sight all too rare for her serious, anxious son. At the last moment before Arthur took the picture, Fred and George had reached out and taken Percy’s hands. 

She still looks at it sometimes, when she needs to remember what life was once like. 

Before Bill’s scars, and before Charlie’s agonising guilt that he wasn’t there in time to help, and before Percy lost his way and before her Ron turned into a soldier and before Ginny hardened to the world around her. Molly needs to remember. And she knows that she will never have another chance to take such a photograph, and must treasure this one – because if she took one now, there would be a gap. There would be no twins, no laughing Fred – just George, smiling half a smile with eyes that no longer look like the owner is up to something.

And it’s that look that she cannot bear to lose.

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from ABBA


End file.
